Enterprise portals typically seek to provide users with a single point of access to multiple resources such as information and services. For example, in a business setting, employees may use enterprise portals to manage inventory, track finances, and review procedures, all through a unified interface such as by directing a browser to an intranet site.
The resources provided via the portal are typically gathered from multiple locations (e.g., servers) that limit access to authorized users, and may include disparate systems. For example, inventory and customer lists may be stored in a business information database, while product manuals and sales reports are stored by another component, such as a document database, with each database requiring authentication before providing access to information. In some cases, different portal users may have different access (or no access) to some of those multiple resources. Such may be the case, for example, when two companies (with different schemas for issuing credentials to users) merge and desire to include information from both entities into a unified portal. Therefore, it would be desirable to have a better way to provide users with access to information.